Interesting Weekend

Friends from Illinois were vacationing in Colorado last week and we had the chance to get together over the weekend. They are wonderful, prayerful people who both love to read and had a stack of books they brought along. I got the chance to finally start reading "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell, which will feed a few posts on this blog, I'm sure. My wife picked up "God Is Closer Than You Think" by John Ortberg. This book is about the different ways people connect with God. She read some passages to me and it was quite eye-opening. Ortberg contends that there are several different ways people naturally connect with God. I can't recite all seven, but there are two that resonated with me.

The first is service. No secret to anyone who reads my blog regularly that I think church should be all about serving others. Apparently that doesn't necessarily float everyone's boat. The second one that suits me is activism as defined as standing against injustice and railing against wrongs in the church. Again, no surprise for anyone who's read the subtitle of this blog. I've been asking why church isn't more relevant and meaningful since I was a teenager. The big red bow tied on top of this weekend of discovery came Sunday morning at church.

Our pastor is preaching through Ephesians. He's done quite a nice job, though last week I did post a comment about the ineffectiveness of long sermons in actually impacting people's lives. But, as sermons go, these have been pretty good. Sunday he had a rant near the end of his message about the church being God's preferred method to express his love and message to the world. He went so far as to say that Christians who reject the church are at odds with God's intention...perhaps at odds with God, Himself. That's how I heard it, anyway. He also pulled no punches about the church being filled with sinners, hypocrites, liars and trouble. I was glad to hear that part. That's why I call the church the most dangerous safe place. We are charged with being the hands and feet of Jesus and often do a miserable job. That said, there isn't anything our pastor said on Sunday that I would disagree with. The church is the place where God works. If I didn't think that I wouldn't bother with this blog. I want the church to be better for the sake of the Gospel. I want people in church to think deeply about how effective we are and ask the hard questions that will lead to being moreso.

I don't understand why God chose such a miserable, flawed system to communicate His glorious message. But then there's a lot about God I don't understand. This past weekend I did feel convicted that I've been standing outside of church recently trying to make things better from a distance. I suppose I could come up with all sorts of reasons why. The bottom line is, if Ortberg is right, I need to be serving somewhere to feel connected and I haven't jumped back into any meaningful church involvement since moving to Colorado. It's probably time to get back on the inside and make trouble there.